from her home in the East Village to Neel's apartment on the corner of Broadway and West 107th Street. The sittings took place just a short time before the babies arrived, and Evans's belly was about as big and unmanageable as it could be. Furthermore, she was asked to withstand not onlyNeel's intense gaze and the discomfort of a long pose but the video camera of Neel's friend Michel Auder, who was recording her painting process. There was no preliminary study and no pencil sketch on the canvas. Neel immediately got going with her blue paint, outlining the contour of Evans's body, which remains visible in the finished picture. Contrary to her usual practice of elaborating theface first, this time Neel focused on the belly at the center of the composition. It is the main character in the picture, its muteness paralleled by the closed-mouth, wide-eyed expression on Evans's face. As in any good portrait, personality projects strongly from the canvas of Margaret Evans Pregnant. Without the helpful cues of clothing or accessories, the record of this encounter between artist and sitter is necessarily made mainly on the basis of body language. Evans is stark naked, wearing nothing but a wedding band that blends almost invisibly with the ocher floor and the chair on which she sits. The graceful model steadies herself on her seat, bolt upright. Her arms extend straight down her sides, their job as props emphasized by the impossible length of her left forearm. Overall, Evans maintains a determined verticality that is echoed by Neel's signature in the lower right corner of the canvas. Neel's setting expertly locates the sense of vulnerability and expectancy that overrides the model's calm exterior. Although the portrait was painted in the large, crowded area of Neel's apartment that doubled as studio and living room, there is no hint of the room's normal bustle. Here it is generalized as floor, wall, moldings, a...
